Page 84 of Velveteen vs. The Consequences of Her Actions

“Cara? Why haven’t I tried to wake Tag up yet?”

The Princess was silent.

“Because if…if it were true love, if you were sure I could wake him, I would have expected you to bring it up as a part of my healing process. To say ‘hey, you know what would make the fairy tale logic of this place put you back together even faster? If you woke someone up with true love’s kiss.’ It makes sense. Only you haven’t said that. You haven’t mentioned him at all. He’s still there, isn’t he? In the glass coffin, waiting for me?”

Still, the Princess was silent. Velveteen nodded, mostly to herself.

“That’s what I thought,” she said. “You haven’t been mentioning him because you’re not sure I can wake him up. Because you think there’s a chance, maybe, that I’m still in love with Aaron.”

“Honey—”

“I guess I should be mad, because why put him to sleep if there’s no chance I’ll wake him up, but I can’t be. He’d be dead if not for you. He is dead. Until someone wakes him up.” Vel raised her head, tears shining in her eyes. “Do you think it’s going to be me?”

The Princess took a deep, unsteady breath. “I don’t know,” she said. “Honey, I’m sorry, but I don’t. Anyone with eyes knows you’ve been carrying a torch for Aaron for so long that we’re all sort of afraid you’re going to burn the house down. You seemed genuinely happy with Tad. It seemed like you were maybe healing a little. I think you would have loved him enough to wake him up, if you’d had the time. Did you have the time? I don’t know. I honestly don’t.”

“He wouldn’t have been there to get hurt if he hadn’t been with me,” said Vel. “He was fighting with me. Because that’s what you do when you’re a superhuman and you love someone else who’s…who’s like you. You fight by their side. You make the world a safer place, together. That was all I ever wanted, was someone who would fight by my side. And Tag did, and he died because of me, and if I can’t bring him back because I’m still all fucked-up over Aaron, that’s just…that’s just unfair.”

“You call Tad ‘Tag,’ but you call Aaron by his name,” observed the Princess. “Why is that?”

Velveteen was silent for several seconds before she said, in a small voice, “I still believe Tag is a hero. I don’t know whether I believe that Aaron is one.”

“Oh, honey,” said the Princess, and went to her friend, and held her close while she cried.

It felt like there was nothing else to do.

* * *

It was almost six o’clock the next afternoon when Action Dude rang the bell at the door Uncertainty had indicated would lead to either the Crystal Glitter Unicorn Cloud Castle or a hipster speakeasy specializing in artisanal preserves. He was in street clothes, and supposed he should probably be thinking of himself as “Aaron,” but Vel made it hard. She almost never seemed to go back to her civilian identity anymore.

(That worried him. A good balance between super identity and secret identity was vital to a healthy mind and attitude. Or at least that was what the therapists supplied by The Super Patriots, Inc. had always said, and he might have doubted it, too, if his older sister hadn’t decided to become a psychiatrist after watching what he went through. Sho agreed that balance was essential. She also agreed that he needed to eat more and would it really kill him to call their mother once in a while? Sho was great. So yeah, he was worried about Vel. It just didn’t seem like it was his place to say anything about it. Didn’t she have people she trusted, at least more than she trusted him, who would notice if something was wrong?)

There was no answer to his ring. He shifted his weight from foot to foot, waiting for one of the Princess’s endless supply of overdressed woodland creatures to open the door and tell him he wasn’t welcome, or for some skinny twenty-something in an “ironic” T-shirt blazoned with one of those same woodland creatures to open the door and try to sell him authentic vintage heirloom tomato parsnip jelly. Basically the same thing, right? Except that the Princess was more likely to offer jelly in the form of jam tarts, and she was less likely to share them with him.

He was considering the merits of knocking again when the door finally opened to reveal a statuesque blonde woman in jeans and a tight T-shirt that read not your happy ending in elaborate red and gold letters. She looked like a love letter to fan art, and he thought, privately, that most of her fans would have died of either shock or joy to see her like that.

There was something a little blurry about her features, like her makeup was made of funhouse mirrors. If any of her fans saw her tonight, they wouldn’t recognize her. “Walk with me, Aaron?” she asked, and it wasn’t really a question. It never was, with her.

“Um,” he said. “Sure.” Then: “How do you feel about parsnip jelly?”

The hipster speakeasy turned out to be three blocks over and one block down, sandwiched between a store that only sold mayonnaise and another that only sold blind boxed toys imported from Japan. Aaron wasn’t sure any of these establishments had a very long life ahead of them. There was specializing to stand out from the crowd, and then there was…this.

But maybe that was easy for him to say. His power set was one of the most common and most all-around useful in the superhuman toolbox, after all. There had never been a question about his marketability. Only about his loyalty.

The Princess settled across from him, dropping a metal stand with the number “5” clipped to it on the center of the table. “There’s a good chance she’s still in love with you, and I want to know what you’re planning to do about it,” she said, without preamble.

“Um,” said Aaron. “Be…very, very happy, and very, very careful?”

“You bet your ass you’re going to be careful,” grumbled the Princess. “You don’t deserve her. She’s too good for you by half.”

“I’m not going to argue with that.”

“Good, because you’d lose.” The Princess folded her arms and slouched in her seat in a distinctly un-princess-like fashion. “I got us scones and jam. They do an assortment. It seemed efficient.”

“Um,” said Aaron. “Thank you?”

“You going to answer everything I say with a question, or what? Because if you are, this is going to be a long damn conversation.”

“I don’t know what you want me to say,” said Aaron. “We’ve never been friends, and that’s never been a bad thing, because Vel needed people in her life who weren’t also a part of mine. She needed people she could trust. You’ve been amazing for her. But it means I don’t know how to talk to you. I don’t know how to make you understand that I’m not trying to be the bad guy here.”